About
Jack Eric Williams 1944 - 1994
The musical compositions of Jack Eric Williams have lain dormant for 23 years. The award -winning chorales, modern operas, and chamber music of his youth in Texas and Nashville; the art songs comprising poems by such poets as Theodore Roethke, Diane Wakoski, and Frank O’Hara; his two hoped-for Broadway shows – Mrs Farmer’s Daughter and The Nashville Show – they all, to one degree or another, have been sleeping as time passed them over, through no fault of their own.
Jack’s music is still relevant, still incredibly beautiful, and still unique among its peers, despite its forced hiatus.
inflagrante music productions is the structure within which Jack’s work will be preserved, restored, produced, published, and performed;
inflagrante exists solely to promote Jack Eric Williams and his music.
For further information on the creative work we are doing, or if you are interested in performing, producing, or publishing any of
Jack Eric Williams’ compositions, please Contact Me.
As a performer,Jack was best known for his creation of the role of The Beadle in Stephen Sondheim’s 1979 Broadway thriller, “Sweeney Todd”. Mr. Sondheim wrote the difficult tessatura part specifically for Jack. He made his Broadway debut in 1976 in Richard Foreman’s revival of “Threepenny Opera”, produced by Joe Papp and performed at Lincoln Center. He also performed in Foreman’s first film, “Strong Medicine”. Photo credit: Martha Swope
As striking as his performances were, Jack preferred to focus on his work as a composer. He left the cast of “Sweeney Todd” to focus on his musical biography of Frances Farmer, “Mrs. Farmer’s Daughter”, which garnered a 1983 production at PepsiCo Summerfare, directed by Tom O’Horgan, and another, a year later at the American Musical Theater Festival in Philadelphia, directed by George Ferencz. His other Broadway show, a Nashville romantic comedy called “Swamp Gas and Shallow Feelings”, now called "The Nashville Show", was given developmental readings in 1988 and 1990 at the National Music Theater Conference of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, and a third in 1991 by the National Music Theater Network as part of its Broadway Dozen Series. It was also the recipient of the 1990 Richard Rodgers Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
Jack Eric Williams
Additional Biographical Info
Jack Eric Williams was born in Odessa, Texas on August 28, 1944. He grew up in Texas, and then moved to Nashville where he continued his work in music and theater before moving permanently to New York City, where he lived until his premature death on January 28, 1994.
He performed his cabaret shows, “Songs and Other Devices, vols 1 - 4” and “5 Nights In May” at NYC clubs such as The Ballroom, Reno Sweeney, Lone Star Café, The Other End, and The West Bank Café. Concert evenings of his compositions were heard at the West Bank Café, Chelsea Theater Center, Ted Hook’s, and The Lucky Strike Club.
From an early age, Jack began setting poems to music, and these songs constitute a large portion of Jack’s catalog. From Emily Dickinson to e.e. cummings to Archibald MacLeish to the single largest contributor, Kenneth Patchen, Jack uncovered funny, wry, dark, and universal nuggets and set them to impossibly beautiful music.
Jack received numerous commissions for compositions for theatrical works, including the Summer Theater of the University of South Carolina, the Tennessee Arts Commission, the American Dance Festival, Playwrights Horizons, the Arena Stage, and the New York Theater Festival.
Jack was also a respected teacher of voice in New York City. From 1982 – 1992, he maintained a full complement of private students.
His directing credits include “Man Of La Mancha” for the Tennessee Repertory Theater, and “Threepenny Opera” as artist In residence at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN.
In the 1960’s, in Texas, Jack won numerous awards in composition from the Texas Manuscript Society, the Texas Young Composers, and the National Young Composers Societies.
In 1965, he and librettist Elizabeth Lyne, to whom he was married, won the National Grass Roots Opera Competition with “The Hinge Tune”.
About
in flagrante music productions
Jack was ill for a long time, and his personal papers and all of his music, never well organized to begin with, suffered in the duration and aftermath. He died without a will, and all of his papers and music archives in their unadulterated and unorganized state were sent to his son in Texas where they remained for the next 18 years. In 2012, the rights were transferred to Eve Martinez, at which time, 9 cartons of material pretty much still in its original 1994 state were returned to Brooklyn, NY.
Restoration
Much of this material dates back to the early‘70’s. At this stage, Restoration is a large component of working with this material. This work breaks down into three basic categories:
· Transfer approx.. 30 ¼” reels to modern media;
· Study and then copy and record viable candidates of the 30 – 40 existing manuscripts, some award-winning, for possible current use.
- if budget were possible - Re-record (and perform concerts of) 30-year old demo tapes of Mrs. Farmer’s Daughter, Swamp Gas, and the Patchen material with updated orchestrations and performances to better represent the pieces. When you listen to the poor quality of the clips on this site, you will see how badly this is needed.
Permissions/Copyrights
Another large administrative task which must be done, or re-done before any of Jack’s work can be wholeheartedly promoted in the marketplace is asking for and receiving Permissions to use the numerous poems he used as lyrics in many of his notable art songs.
Once permission has been given, Copyright protection is the next step to be obtained for Jack’s important compositions. Some say that copyright is not so crucial, that possession is nine-tenths of the law. When finances are tight, these decisions are important.
Promotion/Publication
Because Jack Eric Williams’ music speaks for itself, Publication, is the most permanent and effective use of our very limited resources, and possibly offers a return on investment. That being said, certain songs that do have commercial potential should and will be Promoted to singers, agents, A & R, and management when and if possible to the best of our ability. Increasing the demand for Jack’s songs from any direction is crucial.
Estate Planning
I need assistance in finding the best possible permanent home for Jack’s papers and music. I am not in possession of all his papers by any means, nor have I undertaken to do so. As I progress in exploring this issue, I will share information with others who may be interested in this topic. If you have suggestions or information that could be helpful, please use the Contact Me form, below.
About
Eve Martinez, in flagrante sole proprietor
I am a singer/environmentalist/textile artist/gardener who has made my living for the last twenty-five years promoting waste reduction and recycling and implementing community-based material collection and education programs throughout New York City.
Before that, I had the distinct pleasure and privilege of working closely with Jack Eric Williams for over ten years. I worked on the Frances Farmer material extensively and appeared in the 1983 SUNY Pepsico Summerfare production of Mrs. Farmers’ Daughter. I featured several of Jack’s art songs in my own cabaret act, and I sang his material in concert numerous times in New York City at locations such as the Westbank Café and The Production Company.
After his death in 1994, another close friend of Jack’s and I were appointed as administrators of his estate to distribute all of his effects, including his tapes, music, and scrapbooks, to his son in Texas. It was through this work that I became interested in the future of Jack’s catalog, and first made an offer to acquire it. Those efforts were unsuccessful, but by maintaining open communications, in 2012, I was able to acquire the material at long last.
I had long since put my performing life behind me, considering myself blessed to have known Jack and worked with him for the time I did. But I didn’t hesitate to renew my offer when his son expressed an interest decades later. I wish I had thought a bit. Because what got delivered to my door was a brilliant man’s life’s work unrealized. And what was I going to do about it?
What I did was sort through a lot of boxes of music and tapes and memorabilia several times; make lists; listen to some cassettes; transfer some cassettes to CD; make MP3 files; find someone to transfer ¼” reels to modern media; write to publishers asking for permissions to use poems for lyrics; start a small business, in flagrante; See what develops.
I only know one thing: I believe in Jack Eric Williams’ music and am committed to making it available for as many people to enjoy as possible.
Please give a listen, get involved, stay tuned. Contact Me
The rescue mission continues
Missing Music Found!!!
With This Rose I Thee Wake/The Irate Songster – Kenneth Patchen
One facet of my restoration work is recompiling the large group of Kenneth Patchen poems that Jack set to music in the 1970’s. At this time, I have only written documentation in the form of a program of a production titled “The Irate Songster” by the Ensemble Theater Company in Nashville, with 30 poems, that took place sometime in the ‘70s.
Of those 30, nineteen were performed in concert and recorded in the early 1980’s in New York City. At the time of my acquisition of Jack's catalog, I could account for only those 19.
At the start of 2021 I received a call from a person who had won the contents of an abandoned storage locker in New Jersey. It contained boxes and boxes of music with Jack Eric Williams' signature on it and memorabilia from Sweeney Todd and many other Broadway musicals. The storage unit belonged to a person who worked with Jack his entire life, on every show. This person had recently passed away, and I had assumed all this was lost, so I was thrilled. The new owner was hoping he had hit the lottery with all those signatures, and I hated to disavow him of his fantasies by telling him that those boxes were full of rehearsal music and the signatures were all xeroxes (and really - when you have thousands of something, how valuable can they be?) But after talking him down from an astronomical asking price, I purchased everything of Jack's, and a dear friend and lover of Jack's music drove out there and got it all for me and shipped it to me in Oberlin.
Four huge boxes appeared on my porch, and again, I went through them page by page. As always, it was a big mess. I now know what treasure hunters experience. You know what you're looking for, and you are digging and digging, and all of a sudden, there it is - one, then another, and a little further another one. I was crying I was so happy.
These are the poems I was able to rescue from the storage unit:
- About Making Judgements/Golden Plum Buds
- Catfish River Lullabye
- Fall Of the Evening Star
- Friend, the Rabbit
- I Went to the City
- It Is the Hour
- Lonesome Boy Blues
- O All Down Within the Pretty Meadow (the Lovers Toss at their Wondrous Play)
- To A Certain Section Of Our Population
- Where?
What's more, I have been able to work with some remarkable musicians, Michael Stapleton and Helen Kemeny to record three of them.
